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DOLPHIN, GBA SOUND TOOLS NEAR COMPLETION
8:57pm ET, monday march 13th

The sound system for the Game Boy Advance is almost complete, with the Dolphin sound system not far behind, developer Factor 5 confirmed to The Nintendo Project today. With only debugging to be done and the documentation left to be produced, the 32-bit handheld is set to sound phenomenally better than its current predecessor. Version 1.0 of the Dolphin system is less than two months away from completion, or "pretty much done," Factor 5's Julian Eggebrecht explained.

The Game Boy Advance sound system will sound "dramatically better than GBC or any other handheld out there," Eggebrecht informed us. Expect to hear demos of the sound by the end of April. The sound system, which is a modified version of Factor 5's MusyX technology, has been in development since last December. (You can read more about MusyX on Factor 5's web site.)

Factor 5 apparently has big plans for the Dolphin sound system. "MusyX for Dolphin was started about a year ago," Eggebrecht told us. And while version 1.0 of the software is nearly finished, 2.0 is in the depths of development. "We've got a road map for a 1.0, 2.0," etc.," he said. Version 1.0 allows every developer for the system to create "amazing sound...Stuff which you've never heard on a console or the PC before." 2.0 is far behind, and is planned to include some pretty "weird" features which are as of now still under wraps.

The sound magicians at the San Rafael, California-based development house were behind one of the best-looking and best-sounding games for the N64, Rogue Squadron. In addition, the company has developed several proprietary speech compression and sound tools for the N64, GBC, and other systems. Two more still-secret N64 games are in the making, along with "Thornado" presumed to be for the Dolphin, among other future products. But what you hear from Factor 5 now is nothing compared to what the Dolphin will produce.